


Prince to Thieves

by Serpenscript



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Fingering, Blackmail, Castration, Child Abuse, Depression, Domestic Violence, Exhibitionism, Masturbation, Medical Procedures, Mutilation, Nipple Clamps, Object Insertion, Other, Public Nudity, Shock, Sounding, Underage Masturbation, Verbal Abuse, surgical mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:51:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2016921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serpenscript/pseuds/Serpenscript
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his third year of Hogwarts, Severus Snape learns the joys of masturbation - but it all goes horribly wrong when he returns home that summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prince to Thieves

**Author's Note:**

> Please bear with me if I've coded or tagged something oddly - this is my first time using Ao3. Traditionally I only post to my blog, but so few people find it to comment and that really got me down. Comments really are important - they encourage, inspire, and motivate the author to keep creating. A friend told me Ao3 was THE place to post for fandom these days, so let's give it a go, hmm?
> 
> Please be sure to READ THE WARNINGS: it is not fluffy, it is not for the faint of heart!

In his third year at Hogwarts, Severus Snape hits puberty at full speed. It’s horribly awkward, of course; he grows several inches taller, and his trousers and shirts are suddenly too short on him. Hair grows under his arms and at his groin, and his voice - _finally_ \- starts to break. His face gets spotty, his hair gets more oily - and most notably, his hormones surge to life. The merest glimpse of cleavage or thigh or smooth stomach is enough to make the blood rush to his groin. And even the briefest thought of breasts and nipples, or of kissing and petting, is enough for his cock to tent his robe. And sometimes, not even that - sometimes all he has to do is _stretch_. Sometimes all he needs is the scent of someone’s perfume, a seat that’s already warm when he slides into it, a brush of leg against his when he sits too close - it seems like anything and everything is arousing to his thirteen-year-old body. And it’s horribly awkward and _embarrassing_ , and he’s never been so thankful for school robes, which help disguise his ill-timed erections. 

If the first thing he learns about puberty is how utterly inconvenient random moments of arousal are, the _second_ thing he discovers is the delight of wanking. It’s both maddening and frustrating when his prick gets hard at a moment’s notice, and yet it’s so _satisfying_ to duck into a loo for a quick stroke of his prick against his palm, and a moment of pleasure sparking up his spine - 

And the first time he orgasms, it’s almost accidental. His wand beeps from under his pillow and drags him out of a lovely dream where he’s snogging _Lily_ , and in the dream she’d let him slide his hands under her shirt and touch the smooth, creamy skin of her ribs, and she’d _just_ encouraged him to move his hands higher when the alarm had woken him. 

It seems a waste to let the dream stop there, so he flops back on his pillows and tries to imagine what it would be like to continue. To slide his hands up higher, until his thumbs brush the cotton of her bra - _no_ , he decides, it’s a dream, so his fingers touch the smooth curves of her small breasts. And her breath would hitch and she’d _smile_ at him when he grazes his thumbs over her nipples - 

He has no idea what _her_ nipples would feel like, or how different a girl’s nipples are from his own dusky rose nipples, but he slides one hand under his shirt and teases himself into tight little nubs, and likes the shivery feeling it gives him. He pictures Lily shivering, asking him to do it again, pinch and tug lightly at her nipples, and she’d blush at asking him so boldly, but he’d obey. 

His heartbeat sounds loud in his ears as he imagines it - and his cock is _hard_ , standing straight up and stretching out the front of his y-fronts - and before he gives himself time to think about it, he slides a hand down into his pants and curls his fingers around his prick. It feels - it feels _good_ , and even better when he moves his hand. Oh. Oh, like _that_ , and he almost doesn’t have to fantasize anymore because just moving his hand on his prick feels _brilliant_ , so much better than he could have imagined. But he holds onto his fantasy anyway, because he doesn’t want to waste it. 

So he pictures Lily making short breathy gasps as he touches her breasts and plays with her nipples - he imagines they’d be pinker and maybe larger than his own, and her breasts would be freckled. Not as much as her face, but still scattered with some freckles; and he imagines _kissing_ her, and maybe she’d even open her mouth and let him try using his tongue - he can’t imagine what it would be like, other than _wet_ , but the upper years talk so knowingly about French kissing - it _must_ be something good. 

So he squeezes his fingers around his prick and pumps his hand until his toes begin to curl, and imagines that she tastes - tastes like Lily, he guesses, because his imagination fails him, but it’s enough. He imagines her eyes closing and her _moaning_ against his lips - maybe saying his name, _Severus, oh_ \- 

And the delicious pleasure that’s been building and tightening low in his belly explodes. He can’t even manage words - _ngh, guh - o-oh_ \- because it catches him by surprise, his hips bucking and jerking as his cock pulses, and then come makes a damp spot against the front of his pants and covers his fingers and makes his cock sticky. For a long moment he lays there, limp and feeling _so good,_ legs and toes and his spine all tingly and then, when thought finally trickles through the fog of sensation, he thinks, _so that’s an orgasm_. And he can’t wait to try it again, to find out if it’s a fluke or if he can make it happen again. 

So the very next morning - why waste time? - when he wakes with his prick tenting his pants again, he grabs a towel and a change of clothes, and dashes for the boys’ shower. It’s early enough that he can grab one of the separate stalls normally hogged by the upper years, instead of using the open communal shower. 

His prick, he decides, is a rather decent prick, though he hopes he’ll continue to grow. He’s skinny and scrawny; he’s got more to compensate for, after all. But when he’s hard, his cock fills his hand nicely, and he likes the flared ridge of his glans, and how the shape of it is visible even before the foreskin peels back. His glans is sensitive too - when the spray from the shower hits it directly, it makes him hiss. 

He bathes like lightning, shampoos his hair almost as an afterthought - then soaps up his hands and leans against the shower wall and explores his cock and balls. He’s too impatient to be _too_ thorough - there are other showers, he’s got the _rest of his life_ to wank if this is repeatable - but he discovers that it feels really good to play with his foreskin, and that there’s a sensitive spot on the underside of his prick, just beneath the head, that feels brilliant if his hand slides over the glans while he’s wanking. 

The slippery foam lets him slide his hand even faster on his cock, letting that pressure build and build until he can’t hold it back anymore. And when he bites his fist to keep silent and shoots his white seed against the shower wall, he learns that it makes him weak-kneed, and he has to lean against the wall while he shudders through his orgasm. And it’s _brilliant_. 

It is, he decides, _entirely_ repeatable. And he resolves to wank as often as possible, in as many ways and places as he can manage. It’s _research_ , and he will accept the challenge eagerly. 

It makes him feel good. It makes him feel _older_ , like puberty opened the door to a secret club of adulthood. And he thinks now that he understands why the upper years are so keen to sneak off and snog - they talk, and they say a wank is good, but a _fuck_ , that’s like comparing cheap muggle chocolate to Honeyduke’s Finest - no comparison at all - and he can’t comprehend how it could be _better_ than a wank, but he hopes he’ll have the chance to find out someday.

But for now all he has is himself and his hands, and that’s fine. He can’t get enough of wanking, because he’s discovered a wonderful truth: _orgasms don’t discriminate_. 

Lily is the only one outside of his own house who speaks to him, and he has few friends within Slytherin itself - certainly none who’d be interested in sexual experimentation with _him_. He’s not attractive, and that’s putting it mildly. There was no money for dentists, not after his father got laid off; and his clothes are stained and second-hand, though he’s tried his hardest to make them presentable. 

And his _hair_. It’s lank and greasy no matter what he does with it, even if he washes it every day. Spending less time brewing might make a difference - but then he’d have to give up the one thing he’s really good at, and he likes impressing Lily when he can brew things she can’t. Even if she shouldn’t be surprised since he’s a halfblood and she’s muggleborn, and he’s known about magic longer than her. Plus he likes the challenge potions gives him; each potion is a secret to unlock, a formula to decipher.

But greasy hair or not, he can lay in his bed at night and roll his bollocks in one hand and wank his cock furiously with the other, and have an orgasm that is every bit as good as one the rich pureblood in the next bunk over might have. 

It helps that he’s _good_ at wanking. Or he _thinks_ he is, because he’s not about to ask the others. He gets enough humiliation in the morning when they have to shower together - his scrawniness and pasty white skin are common targets for their insults. But he practices wanking often; he’s learned a spell for silencing his curtains, and a gentle cleaning spell - because he learned the hard way that _Scourgify_ is _not_ a good spell to use on his bits. Especially when his bits are sensitive just after orgasm - he was lucky that he’d learned the silencing spell first, or his roommates would have never let him live it down. Just _remembering_ it makes him cringe. 

He’d preened and congratulated himself when he’d stumbled across a spell to transfigure parchment into tissue, even a clever little vibrating spell that’s applied to the fingertips. It’s _supposed_ to be used for back massage, but -

It makes him come harder than he’d come before, sparks behind his eyelids and toes spastically curling, and it makes him want _more_. He wanks several times a day, and even then he feels like he’s in a perpetual state of arousal; one weekend he finds an empty, dusty classroom and makes a sort of fort in it and barricades the door, and alternates wanking with studying potions, and by the end of the weekend he actually feels _raw_ , he’s rubbed himself so much. After that he learns to keep a little bottle of hand lotion in his pocket, and another in his school bag, and that helps with the soreness. 

Lubricant would be better - one of the upper year Slytherin boys sells it in small bottles - but hand lotion is cheap, and it’s available in some of the bathrooms so he can refill the cheap plastic bottle he keeps with him. 

He discovers he likes the adrenaline rush of wanking where he might get caught - and he _is_ caught, once, by Mulciber. But after Mulciber has his laugh, he seems surprised and even a little _impressed_ at how many places Severus has managed a wank, and dares him to toss off in the transfiguration classroom. 

It’s fun to be _almost_ caught, but only embarrassing to _actually_ be caught with his prick out and robes open, but on the plus side Mulciber’s Slytherin. And Severus has to take the dare or lose face - but he finds he _wants_ to take the dare. It’s _exciting_.

It takes him a week and a half to pull it off, but he does - he stays back after class and pretends he’s struggling with an assignment, but he’s left a potions bottle in the hallway to explode and create a disorienting gas. When McGonagall leaves him alone in the classroom to investigate, he wanks furiously - and he still just barely manages to spell away his come and close his robes before she sweeps back in looking frazzled. And he’s _sure_ she looks at him suspiciously, him all red faced and shaky and hunched over his desk, but she has no proof, and she lets him go as soon as he demonstrates the transfiguration properly. 

After that, it becomes a game where Mulciber dares him to wank somewhere, sometimes with an added twist - use his left hand, or he has to actually _undress_ so he’s starkers when he comes, or he has to hump against something, or come _on_ something - and Mulciber gives him things when he succeeds. Chocolate frogs, new quills, parchment, potions ingredients, sickles and knuts - but he’d do it even without the bribes, he thinks, for the thrill and because he’d wank anyway. 

Over Christmas hols, the castle is almost deserted; only a mere handful of students remain, and only a skeleton staff. The solitude doesn’t bother him; other than the game he has with Mulciber, and helping Avery in Potions in return for help with Arithmancy, he doesn’t have any friends. And Mulciber’s left him with a full stack of challenges. 

He’s the only student staying from Slytherin; he’s got the dorms entirely to himself, so he starts there. It feels wicked and arousing to walk through the hall from his dorm room down to the common room entirely naked, feeling the chilly dungeon air on his bare skin. It’s too cold for comfort, and the common room is even colder because the house elves have let the fire go out. 

He almost goes back to his room for clothes, or at least a blanket, but he likes the dim murky light of the common room when the only light filters through the water of the lake. And he likes the way his skin looks a sort of watery blue-green-grey, so he picks a couch just underneath one of the windows that show the lake, and imagines that a mermaid or the giant squid will watch him wank. He finds it more amusing than arousing, but he thinks he likes the idea of being watched, too, if it’s someone who won’t laugh at him.

The cold leather of the couch is an almost-painful shock against his bare skin. His nipples are tightly pebbled from cold air and his balls are pulled up between his legs, but anticipation makes his heart thump. There’s something darkly erotic about being naked in a public place, something _exciting_ about the risk, even when it’s minimal - because he _doesn’t_ want to get caught, not again - and he thinks there’s something poetic about his pale skin against the black scuffed leather of the couch. 

He doesn’t know when he’ll have the the common room to himself again, and he’s been itching to try one of Mulciber’s suggestions, so he sprawls on his stomach, and carefully tucks his eager prick _between_ two of the couch cushions, and settles down. 

And _oh_. His weight flattening the cushions means they press against his prick, and it’s weird but _good_ , even though the friction is unpleasant. But hand lotion fixes that, and then his cock slides easily between the edges of the square cushions, and when he shift and moves his hips the cushions shift with him, and _wow_. It’s like the leather is masturbating him, and he clutches the armrest and humps the couch madly. It’s a heavy, solid piece of furniture built to last generations of Slytherins and it doesn’t even squeak in protest as he moves. The leather only creaks faintly, and his hands get sweaty against the armrest even though the room’s cold, and then he bites his lip and shudders and spills his seed between the cushions. 

It’s a _brilliant_ way to start the holiday. 

And it only gets better. There are no love-struck students lingering on the Astronomy tower, and Mulciber had dared him to wank _naked_ from the tower - but both of them had forgotten to account for the fact that it’s winter in _Scotland_. The house elves keep the snow cleared off the floor for the students’ classes, but the stone itself is _freezing_ beneath his feet, and he shivers and chatters so much that he’s not sure he’ll be _able_ to come. His nipples are so hard they ache and his balls are trying to crawl up inside his body, but he’s a _teenager_ and he’s used to bitterly cold winters.

He still sets a new personal record for fastest wank. 

But he thinks, when he’s scrambling frantically back into his discarded clothing, that he wants to wank up here again sometime when the weather is warmer. He imagines laying on his back on the cool stone when it’s a warm, muggy spring night, and stroking himself slowly to hardness under starlight, or moonlight, or even a light spring rain, and even though he’s just wanked the idea makes his belly tighten. 

The bitter temperatures and snow discourage him from further outdoor locations, but Hogwarts is large enough to offer multiple locations and chances. He’s wanked in the potions lab before, of course - he almost _lives_ there, after all - but it adds a new level of excitement to lay out on Slughorn’s desk and wank. He pretends it’s his own desk, that the classroom is _his_ , and his students are in awe of his brewing skills. And there are potions that use semen as an ingredient - dark ones, and he’s only learned one recipe that uses it, but he imagines he’ll learn more. Semen is something he has plenty of, and he shudders and comes all over Slughorn’s desk when he imagines how impressed Lily might be if he finds or develops potion that cures something previously considered incurable.

He even manages to wank in Filch’s dungeons. That’s surprisingly easy - all he has to do is dose Mrs Norris’ food with something that makes her itch uncontrollably, and once Filtch finds her scratching herself madly, there’s nothing for it but to take her to the Care of Magical Creatures professor to cure her. And since the Caretaker won’t leave his mangy cat’s side until she’s cured - and Severus _knows_ exactly how long it will take before the potion works its way through the cat’s system - he’s left with several hours to safely make free with the dungeons. 

It’s a different kind of arousing to stand with his prick out in a room full of manacles and chains and torture implements, but some of them intrigue him. He thinks the manacles might be fun, if he was at _Lily’s_ mercy. And if she was at _his_ \- his cock goes from soft to hard at just the thought. He’d touch her _everywhere_ , make her sigh and moan. He’d taste her, tease her - and she’d tremble and shiver, make the chains rattle, beg him to stop - then beg him to _not_ stop, and before he can stop himself, _he’s_ come. Just from standing there wanking and imagining her voice breathless and begging, chains rattling as she tugged at the manacles restraining her - he’s never imagined something like that before, but he thinks he likes it. 

He needs a bit to recover after that, so he amuses himself by exploring the dungeon more thoroughly. Many of the implements look too painful to contemplate, but he can’t resist trying _some_ things. There’s a wooden horse that he experimentally straddles, before giving it up as a bad job. There’s a chair with no seat, that has cuffs on the armrests and legs; his balls dangle oddly when he sits in it. It makes him feel weirdly exposed and vulnerable, even though he’s strolling around the dungeon with his cock out anyway, but then he thinks of Lily sitting in that chair, and wonders what _she’d_ feel, if she’d like it. 

One wall displays a large selection of crops and whips and floggers. Some of them look utterly _vicious_ , with bits of metal and glass tangled into the leather cords; one is made entirely of chain, and there’s even a spiked flail among the lot. The studded leather straps, especially, make him wince; he’s been whipped with a belt before, and he doesn’t like it. Some of the floggers’ strands seem almost butter-soft to his fingers; but when he tests one against his thigh, he quickly puts it back. It stings a _lot_ , for something that seems so deceptively soft. 

There are gags and bridles and hoods; stocks, and posts, and benches and racks. There’s a table with drills and hammers, and _branding_ irons - there’s a large one of the Hogwarts crest, and smaller ones for each of the houses - and gruesome looking things he can’t imagine have any place at all in a school for children. There are cages, too, of all sizes; some are set deep into the ground and others hang from the ceiling. There’s even one with spikes facing inwards, like the ones used to hold criminals for testimony. And there are smaller torture devices too, like small wicked knives, and rasps, and files, and pin-wheels with sharp points, and all kinds of clamps - spring clamps, screw clamps, clamps with weights and chains, alligator clamps with jagged teeth, and in all sizes. Some of them look large enough to crush feet and hands.

The smallest ones look mostly harmless, though, so he tests one of them on his finger tip. And then, because it seems the thing to do, he puts it on his nipple. And then, just to do it right, he puts its match on his _other_ nipple, and plays with them a bit. He’s not one for pain, really, but it seems almost wrong to not have a _little_ pain when wanking in a dungeon. 

He’s suddenly possessed of the urge to do it right, and shrugs out of his robe. The dungeons are _cold_ , especially in winter, and his nipples twinge sharply when he bares himself. It actually feels good, in a strange way - the sting from the clamps makes his cock harden again. And when he folds himself awkwardly into one of the cages, closes the door and presses his feet against it, he can’t help shivering a little and letting his imagination run wild. _What if I won’t be let out until I come?_ he thinks, and he wanks frantically, because the crosspieces of the cage beneath his bum are distinctly uncomfortable and the clamps on his nipples throb and ache even when he doesn’t touch them. It’s almost like having an extra set of hands pinching his nipples, so he can cup his balls and play with them while he wanks his cock with the other. 

The cage creaks rustily when he moves and he closes his eyes and pinches his foreskin, and imagines that he hears footsteps in the noise - that someone will come and _find_ him, naked and folded in half into a cage with clamps on his nipples and oh, the _idea_ of being caught in such a perverted situation! Adrenaline and arousal and near desperation makes him wank almost viciously, until his legs jerk and bang against the sides of the cage as he comes. Somehow the little bit of pain in his nipples and the cage and the creepy atmosphere make it more intense; it takes him a few minutes to decide to move again, and then only because he wants to be _well_ away before Filch returns - lest he be locked in the cage for _real_.

But then he learns the hard way that clamps hurt more coming _off_ than going on, and swears an impressive blue streak when he gingerly removes the first clamp and the blood rushes back in and with it, pain. He holds his breath when he removes the other one but it hurts just as much, and for a minute all he can do is cover his chest with his long fingers and wait for it to subside into a more bearable ache. That hurts a _lot_ , and he makes a mental note to dare Mulciber to use them. 

His piece de resistance, however, is wanking in the library. It _seems_ like a simple challenge, but spells cover almost every inch, protection against spills, fire, wind, dust, insects and mites, rot, mites, mildew and dirt, as well as standard resistance to spell damage and summoning charms - and some of them trigger alarms. Even so, it only takes one dedicated afternoon wandering the rows to find his location - there’s a shelf of self-cleaning books ( _Charms for Clean Households, Do-It-Yourself Cleaning Charms, 101 Cleaning Charms You Can’t Live Without_ ), and there aren’t any alarms on it. Perhaps because it makes sense books for cleaning would end up in or near messes, their pages and covers have been treated with potions to resist stains and spells.

Unfortunately, the library is also where one of the remaining students, a swot from Ravenclaw, camps out with a pile of books and all his winter break assignments. And then there’s Madam Pince to contend with; Severus is convinced she doesn’t _sleep_ because she’s always in the library, ears pricked for any sign of disturbance. 

So he doesn’t get his chance until the last day of winter break, and even then it’s a stroke of pure luck. He’s lurking near the Headmaster’s office out of boredom when the stairs begin to turn, and when Headmaster Dumbledore emerges, Pince is right behind him. “Everything is in order for the new term, of course,” Pince says stiffly - the _only_ way she ever speaks. “I wouldn’t leave with my duties undone -” 

Dumbledore assures her that he would never think it of her; she is most dutiful and fore-thinking, indeed. 

“But my sister is ailing, you understand. Not well at all. This may be my _last chance,_ ” she says portentously, and Dumbledore nods gravely. 

“Yes, I see. You may take off more time if you need, Erma - family should come first,” he offers. “I seem to recall you have a great deal of unused vacation time?” 

But Pince looks more sour than ever. “Time off? Shirk my duties? No, _no_ , Headmaster, I _will_ return tonight. Eloise _will_ understand.” Her tone seems to imply _or else_. “She understands duty, you know, not like any of today’s youth. I will take a light lunch with her, but I should be back in time for supper, I believe.” 

Severus slips away furtively while they’re still talking; that’s all he needs to know. All he has to do is get _to_ the library, and somehow avoid detection until she closes up and locks the door. 

In the end, it’s ridiculously easy to pull off; despite her talk of duty, Pince seems worried and distracted. He crouches under a study table with just a disillusionment spell, and she doesn’t even glance his way; he barely has time to get cramped before the lights are clicked off and the doors creak shut. It seems almost _too_ easy, but he breathes a shaky, excited breath when the locks slide into place with a loud click. He still makes himself wait and count to three hundred, just in case she’s forgotten something. 

When she doesn’t return, he crawls out from his hiding place and stretches, already feeling blood filling his prick in anticipation. He’s not looking forward to classes resuming and being surrounded by students and the lack of privacy - especially since it means Potter, Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew will be back too - but he’s still got today and the entire library to himself, and he means to make it count. 

He wanks first leaning against the one bookshelf he’d scouted out, imagines that Lily’s in the next row over looking for a book on charms, that if he’s not quiet she’ll hear him and look over and see him, school robe open and hanging off his shoulders and his prick sliding through his fist. Maybe she’d be embarrassed at first, but she wouldn’t be able to stop _watching_ \- 

He thinks he might like it if _she_ saw him, thinks she might like him a bit - and oh, _that’s_ food for his imagination, wondering if _she_ lays in bed at night and touches herself, thinking of _him?_ He touches his chest, pinches his nipples lightly - they’re still a bit sore from his foray in Filtch’s dungeons - and strokes himself furiously to that image, imagining her touching her small breasts in her bed in her dorm room, behind the curtains - burying her face in her pillow so her roommates don’t hear -

He comes with a gasp, come spilling across his hand and down onto the carpeted floor of the aisle, and he sags against the bookshelf behind him, knees weak and heart racing furiously. Despite scouting the spot out earlier, he half expects an alarm to sound. But the library remains quiet; the only thing he hears is his own ragged breathing. He laughs shakily once he catches his breath, then spells his hand and the carpet clean. 

Even though he has the library to himself, it has an oppressive air that almost _demands_ whispering, and he tiptoes, sliding his feet silently over the carpet the way thousands of students have learned how. It feels indulgent and scandalous to wander through the rows and rows of books with his robes open; he likes the feel of walking around with his robes hanging open and nothing beneath, the way his fluttering robes and the cool air teases his prick. He hadn’t meant to come so quickly but he thinks he might be able to come again, before Madam Pince is back. Just in case, he fetches down some books on potions and stacks them at one of the back study tables, and lays one of them open - if he hears the door, he can dash to the table and sit, and claim he fell asleep reading and never heard her leave. She hadn’t really _thoroughly_ searched the library before leaving, after all. 

He’d be a poor Slytherin to miss out on a chance to visit the Restricted Section while he has the chance, so he slips in for a look while he gets his second wind. The amount of information at his fingertips, all forbidden knowledge, makes his heart race and his mouth go dry. He thinks he could find spells to hex the Marauders - something to permanently seal their mouths shut would be good - or something to make him rich, or good looking - 

Instead he finds a book on self-pleasure charms. There’s a real, honest-to-Merlin charm to simulate the feel of a tongue on his prick, and just _reading_ about it makes his legs feel weak. Then he tries to imagine how it might feel, and his prick decide that _yes,_ he’s had quite enough time to recover, so he does his best to commit the spell and the wand moments to memory while his mind is already miles ahead, coming up with fantasies.

He doesn’t dare wank in the Restricted Section, but he doesn’t want to return to his previous spot. Instead he wanders the aisles looking for a new spot, even though it’s less comfortable walking with an erection and it bobs with every step he takes. He finally settles for a window-seat, tucked so far behind rows of dusty, untouched periodicals as to be abandoned. The window itself is grimy, but it affords him some protection from being seen from outside, and there’s even a worn and well-faded cushion in the window. Once upon a time it had probably been a favorite spot to curl up with a book, but it will make a private and secluded spot to wank. 

He has to spell away the dust on the cushion itself because it makes him sneeze, but then he arranges himself carefully in the nook and spreads his knees and tries to remember the words of the charm. Only his body feels so jittery with anticipation - and his hands are shaky - and he thinks there was maybe a mild confundus charm on the book, because the words evaporate from his mind like fog. 

For a moment he considers going back to find the spell again, but his _prick_ is still hard and eager and his imagination is full of ideas. So he settles himself in more comfortably, and lets his fingers stroke himself slowly, teasing himself, trying to imagine the light touches of his fingers are someone’s tongue. Lily’s, maybe. Warm and wet and - he puts a finger in his mouth and licks it, sucks it, and tries to imagine feeling the same things on his cock. He’s used lube and lotion and wanked in the shower, so he knows what _wet_ feels like on his prick, but he can’t help wondering how different it would feel with a tongue, and he trails damp fingertips over the head of his prick. It feels good - wonderful, really - but he thinks it would be _amazing_ if it was Lily’s tongue. Or even just her fingers. 

He doesn’t last much after that - he doesn’t _ever_ last very long, if he’s honest about it - but it feels so _good_ , come spilling over his fingers and onto his belly, and there’s no one there to _see_ him, so he really doesn’t care at all. It’s the best winter holiday he can remember having, and Mulciber is suitably impressed when he returns, especially when he learns Severus wanked not once but _twice_ in the library. For _that_ achievement, he gets to pick out an advanced Potions textbook from the owl-order catalog.

By spring he thinks maybe his prick is bigger than it was in the fall, and maybe his balls, too. He learns to wank fast when he’s only got a moment, and how to draw it out - well, a bit - he’s still a randy teenager, after all. He adds new achievements to his list: he wanks in the Forbidden Forest once, one night when he serves a detention gathering mooncap spores. 

It’s a simple thing to wander away from the other two serving detention with him; the two are fast friends and talk non-stop. And he’s not such a city boy he can’t climb a tree once he’s a safe distance away, where they won’t be able to just _stumble_ across him, not without giving him enough time to cover himself up and look as if he’s just trying to skip out on the dirty work. 

Silently wanking in a tree during a detention, in the Forbidden Forest at night, definitely raises Mulciber’s opinion of him. 

He also gets his chance to wank in the rain - not on the tower, which is always a popular spot for snogging, but behind the quidditch stands. It’s an open area and thus risky, but the stands hide him from the castle’s view. And it is raining, which means most people are inside. It’s spring but it’s _Scotland_ , which means the rain is still cold; it makes his nipples harden into tight nubs, but when he opens his robes and sprawls on the grass on his back - he’s been out in the rain before, multiple times. But it’s an entirely different sensation, feeling individual drops landing on his chest, his stomach, his hardening cock. It’s almost like the rain is teasing him, _almost_ hitting where he wants the drops to fall, never quite on centre - it’s maddening and arousing, and his hand is cold when he wraps it around his cock. And he wanks with rain on his face, eyes closed and one hand pinching and pulling at his nipples, and he comes with a groan and a shudder when a large drop _plinks_ right on the head of his prick in just the right place. 

By the time he musters the energy to go back inside, his robes are soaked and muddy; the rain rinses away all traces of his orgasm before he can use a cleaning spell. 

Even with the ever-present harassment from the Marauders, it’s an altogether good year, but then the school year ends and he has to leave his potions and robes and spells behind for dull muggle-ness of Spinner’s End. 

It’s harder to find time and privacy to wank in the dreary two-up-two-down that he’s grown up in, but he decides he’ll _make_ a way, because he can’t imagine how he’ll survive a long dismal summer there. He doesn’t even have Lily to talk to, because her father’s got a better job and _they_ can afford a vacation to the ocean for the first time. And he really doesn’t begrudge her that because she’s _Lily_ , vibrant and beautiful and full of life, but he thinks the summer will be dull as one of Binn’s lectures without her. 

Mum seldom talks to him at all. She’s even quieter than usual, except when she gets in a screaming spat with his father. When she does speak to him, it’s always to scold him in some way. “Put away your books, they’ll do you no good,” she tells him. “Your father would tell you to climb trees, even get into scraps, be a proper boy.” 

If she’s not harassing him about reading - and what _else_ is there for him to do in Spinner’s End? - she’s telling him what to do - “wash up the dishes, boy,” she’ll say, or “Pick up your father’s clothes,” - she never calls him by name, because his father thinks his name is abnormal. He’s often wondered why she bothered to name him Severus in the first place if even _she_ won’t call him by it. 

A nancy-boy name, his father calls it. _Freaky, weak, effeminate_ \- all things his father loathes, and Severus is _sick_ of how often he’s been lectured on what a _real man is_ by his father. “You know why I won’t bring my friends on by the house? Y’know why? It’s because of _you_ , because I’m ashamed to call a weak, spineless, book-loving boy as my own offspring. You wouldn’t last a _day_ in the factories, boy - you’ve got no strength to you -” 

Severus thinks it’s got far more to do with the fact that his wife is a witch and his son is a wizard than anything else. But it could also be that they’re too poor to entertain, or just that his father doesn’t _have_ any friends. Tobias - Tobias, whom he decides he’ll never call father again, because he’s a stupid, bullying, overweight muggle - doesn’t even have a _job_ anymore, because he was stupid enough to show up to work while drunk. 

Instead, Tobias does odd jobs now for coin. He’s good with machines and he can do basic repairs on on things like lawn mowers and motorcycles, and even a bit under a car bonnet, if they’ve got the tools for him to use. Severus might have a little respect for him if he worked at _that_ , but none of the coin ever makes it home to pay bills or put food on the table - Tobias takes it straight to the bar, and gets as drunk as he can afford. If they’re lucky, he’ll pass out on the sidewalk and never make it home; but more often than not he manages to stagger and weave his way home even when he’s completely pissed. Then he and mum have to try to heave his bulk to the couch, pry off his shoes, darken the windows, and have water and aspirin ready - if they’ve even _got_ the latter - for when he wakes with a headache and foul temper. 

And sometimes Tobias wets himself or shits himself while he’s drunk; Severus has lost track of how many times he and mum have had to silently tiptoe around and clean up his vomit, afraid to make even the slightest sound. Because Tobias is belligerent when he’s hung over, and Severus gets a black eye before he learns to lay low in mornings after Tobias comes home drunk. And it’s _most_ nights, even though Severus can’t imagine how Tobias stays sober long enough to earn his coin. 

Severus _hates_ it, sitting on his bed in his room after dinner - if there _was_ dinner, because sometimes there wasn’t anything to eat - with his arms wrapped around his bony knees, listening and waiting for his father to come home. If Tobias is sober enough to make it home, it’s safer in his room. He likes to hit things when he’s drunk, and when he can’t get his hands on his son, he beats his wife.

Severus doesn’t feel guilty about it - letting him swing at her instead of him - not much, anyway, because she’s an _adult_ and has a wand, and it’s not his fault she chooses not to use it. So he sits in his bedroom with the bald overhead lightbulb - he’s allowed that much, for reading and homework - and listens and downstairs in the kitchen he hears something break and his mum screams at Tobias. It’s always the same - Tobias breaks things, or he hits her, and she screams at him and cries.

Only once does he remember her using her wand. Tobias had been in a right state, drunk and roaring, and he’d hit Severus but good, and then gone after his mum once he was down. He’d been afraid Tobias might actually _kill_ her, he was that pissed and full of fight. His eyes were bloodshot and crazy, but his mum had fumbled for a drawer and pulled out something and pointed it between Tobias’ unfocused eyes. It had been the first time Severus had seen her wand, but all she had said was, “I’m a witch, Tobias -” and he had stopped. And after he let her go, she put her wand back away. And it wasn’t there later, when Severus looked for it; she’d moved it somewhere else.

Severus hadn’t even known she still _had_ her wand. He’s never seen her cast so much as a single spell.

Nothing has changed in Spinner’s End while he was gone. His mum still looks tired and listless, though her hands look more rough than he remembers. She’s started taking in laundry, just enough to pay for food. She still has to pass a few coins to Tobias to drink away, to keep him content, which means he spends even less time tinkering with machines this summer than the one previous. Severus eats his beans and toast without complaint, even though it’s got nothing on a regular night at Hogwarts. He’s glad enough there _is_ dinner, that Tobias hasn’t taken _all_ her washing-money away for drink. 

The silence of the house is oppressive, so he switches on the telly for a bit, but his mum looks at with worry, and he remembers that it costs extra and only Tobias gets the privilege of watching telly. So he turns it off and curls up on the loveseat. It’s been patched so often the mended parts don’t hold anymore, and it’s covered with a faded blanket to hide how badly it’s falling apart. But it’s not uncomfortable, really, and he tries to read until it’s too dark to read by the window light anymore. 

And then he sits there and _thinks_ , about Lily and Hogwarts and Potions, and ways he can get revenge on the bloody Marauders, and even a little about wanking, because that’s _always_ in the back of his mind somewhere these days. 

But he scrambles to his feet when he hears the front door slam open. He’s not quick enough to the stairs to avoid Tobias entirely, but he’s nimble enough to avoid the sloppy backhand that comes his way. The hall mirror isn’t as lucky, and it shatters with a loud crash as he squeezes past Tobias and bolts up the stairs to his room.

Severus can think of many times he had wished his mum would pull her wand - times Tobias had given him bruises and slaps and once, broken fingers - and he escapes to his bedroom because his fingers are itching for _his_ wand, and he doesn’t dare hex his parents. He doesn’t dare risk expulsion - he’s lived with it for this long, after all, knows how to dodge and avoid the worst of it.

Instead, he decides to play with his _other_ wand, which is far more pleasurable. He hasn’t got the _biggest_ prick of the Slytherins in his year, but he knows it like the back of his hand. He knows how to draw out a wank now so it leaves him weak and shaky afterwards, knows just how much pressure to use to make his toes curl. 

He’s learning to experiment, too - to pull and rub gently at his foreskin, sometimes pinching it closed over the glans, even when he’s fully erect - it makes the skin on the shaft taut and lifts his balls, and feels somehow wicked. He’s discovered the slit of his penis is sensitive too - in his last month at Hogwarts he experimented with transfiguring slim metal rods and teasing his cock with them, pushing them just slightly inside. And he thinks, with more practice and time, he’ll be comfortable with sliding them in further. _All_ the way in, maybe; he likes the sensation of the cool metal against his flesh, the foreign-ness of it teasing and sliding inside, slick with his precome - 

He doesn’t have any of them at Spinner’s End, and he can’t transfigure anything - if he won’t risk expulsion to defend himself, he definitely won’t risk it for a bit of fun - so he settles for just his hand. Tobias and his mum are shouting downstairs still, settling in for a good row, and he’s _sick_ of wanking at night with his face buried in a pillow to muffle the noise. He desperately needs a good, long wank, no holds barred - literally - and he can feel his prick already filling as he shuts his bedroom door behind him, flicks on the overhead light, then crosses the room to shut and latch the tiny window tightly. The room is small and stuffy, but closing it helps block some of the noise he can hear from downstairs. 

It takes only a second to shed his pants and trousers and leave them in a sloppy puddle on the floor, and then he drops onto his bed, springs creaking. There’s no box spring, and the lumpy mattress sags, and the ornamental knobs at the end of each post are chipped and dented, but he’s used to it. He knows how to avoid the worst of the lumps and sags, and he sprawls out on his bed, thighs splayed. 

He hasn’t wanked since last night, and it feels good to wrap his fingers around his prick and not have to bite his lip to stay quiet. It only takes a minute to coax his prick to full hardness; he was half-hard before he even reached the bed. And after only a minute of sliding his cock through his fist he has to stop and pull on his balls and squeeze at the base of his cock to keep from coming too soon, because he wants this to be _good_. He wants sparks behind his eyelids and his toes to curl and to be able to forget about the miserableness that’s Spinner’s End.

He fantasizes as he wanks - usually it’s Lily, but sometimes it’s one of the girls in Ravenclaw, or the girl in Hufflepuff whose chest strains the buttons of her school blouse - and lets his hands act out his daydreams. He scratches at his chest, raking his nails lightly over his nipples, then plucks at them; and he briefly takes his hand away from his prick to scratch experimentally at the skin of his inner thighs, and that feels good, too. He scratches a little harder, then tries pinching one of his nipples hard the way the clamps had done, and it makes him wiggle a little. 

The mild sting feels strange in a good way; it makes him feel aroused in a different sense, and he remembers one of the upper years talking about sex between boys. He’d whispered how it had felt amazing and wicked and _filthy_ to be fucked the way a bloke fucks a girl, how there was a spot inside there that all blokes had and it made orgasm even _better_. He’d said it’d hurt at first, but it was worth it.

Severus had tried using his fingers, that night in bed with the curtains drawn and silenced, but it felt bizarre and uncomfortable, even with only _one_ finger, and he hadn’t found _that spot_ , so he’d given it up as a bad job. 

But now, for the first time, he wonders if his fingers weren’t long enough or big enough to reach and press the right spot. And once he has the notion in his head, he can’t let it go. Just the idea of a bigger and better orgasm makes his prick ache and drool precome, and he’s grown since then - his _body_ has grown since then. He thinks it might be different this time, and the idea of fucking himself suddenly seems like the most arousing thing he can think of. 

So he digs around in his school trunk for something that’s maybe the size of a cock, but the closest he can find his his hairbrush. The plastic handle isn’t really as big as a cock would be; _he’s_ bigger around than the handle, but it looks long enough - as long as his fingers and maybe half of his palm - but he thinks it’s good enough for an experiment. 

So he sprawls back on his bed with the hairbrush and a bottle of hand lotion, and he feels wild and reckless as he slathers the handle of the hairbrush with the vanilla-scented lotion. His hands shake a little with nervousness - it looks thicker than he thought once he’s holding it between his legs - but he’s not a coward. So he takes a deep breath and lays back; then draws his knees up to his chest, and presses the slippery handle of the brush against his arse. 

It feels cold and wet and strange, pressing it against his hole, but he’s greedy for _more_. He knows not to jam it in because he remembers how uncomfortable one finger was - but he also remembers Rowle saying it had burned for a moment and then _wow_ , so he exhales slowly and presses a little harder, and - it slips inside his arse. 

He almost yanks it back out. Because it _does_ burn, but he forces himself to hold perfectly still and chants _fuck, fuck, fucking fuck,_ waiting for the burn to pass and the _wow_ to arrive. 

But it doesn’t - the hot sharp burn eases after a moment, but he just feels uncomfortably full, and the bristles of his hairbrush are scratching and prickling the underside of his balls. But after getting this far he’s determined to find that spot, so he jiggles and twists the hairbrush a little, even pulling it out a little and pushing it back in, which feels more than odd, and stings a little. 

He doesn’t expect it when it finally happens, and he jerks upright at the sensation - or as upright as he can with a brush up his bum - it’s like sparks pulling from a different point in his groin, and it feels _brilliant_. 

It’s difficult to find and replicate the movement, and his prick is soft and his hand cramps by the time he figures it out, but once he does - _fuck_ , it’s good. It’s like that spot in him wakes up a little the more it’s touched, and it’s even better when he wraps a shaky hand around his prick and coaxes himself to hardness again. It’s not easy at all to coordinate shoving at the brush in his arse with the movement of his hand on his cock, and he’s sweaty and _tired_ , but those moments when that _jolt_ from inside his arse coincides with a perfect upsweep of his hand - it’s better than wanking in the prefect’s bath, the time he’d gotten the password in trade for doing the prefect’s potions’ homework. It’s better than when he first got his wand, and better than brewing a perfect potion, and even better than wanking in a cage with clamps on his nipples - he can’t think of anything more brilliant than his hand on his prick and a hairbrush handle fucking his arse, and he _knows_ he’s going to come soon and come like the Hogwarts _fucking_ Express. 

The muscles of his stomach are so taut they _hurt_ , and he unfolds enough to plant his feet on the edges of the mattress, because he needs to _move_ , and then he can jerk his hips wildly each time the brush hits _there_ , until the bed creaks loudly beneath him. 

“Fuck - fuck me, so good, _s’good_ , oh fuck,” he gasps, and he flogs his prick and rubs his thumb over the glans to smear the precome and roll the foreskin roughly. He only needs a little more - he’s so _close_ to the edge - so he presses the hairbrush harder, _deeper_ , and the bristles scratch his balls and he thinks even _that_ is brilliant, and he wonders if Lily would feel like this if they had sex, mindless and _greedy_ for pleasure, and that thought shoves him right up to the brink. “Yes - fuck, _harder_ \- so close,” he whimpers, and he reaches for Lily in his imagination, because as incredible as he feels, he knows Lily makes everything even better.

He pictures her mouth wide, lips red, hair messy and wild and tangled as if she’s been writhing in pleasure, and her whole body chest heaving like she’s run a race - she’d have her shirt unbuttoned, or off entirely, and soft small breasts and pink nipples would arch towards him as she screams his name. 

_“Merlin_ fucking _yes_ ,” he wails, “Yes - yes - fuck, _yes!”_ He’s _never_ come so hard his vision goes white. He swears he lifts clear off the mattress, and he can actually _feel_ his arse clenching madly around the hair brush’s handle, and for a minute he can’t even feel his feet or hands or anything but his belly and groin and his cock and his arse, that’s how _good_ it is. 

When he finally collapses back onto the lumpy mattress the bed frame creaks and groans sharply in protest, and he feels like a boneless puddle of _goo_. His arse is sore, but the rest of him feels far too good for him to care. His arms and legs all tingle and there’s warm, slippery come on his chest and belly; some of it reaches almost to his chin, which he dimly notes is a new record. And all he can hear is his ragged breathing and his pounding heart - 

Except it’s not his pounding heart. It’s pounding _feet_ on the narrow stairs outside his room.

“You know better, boy!” Tobias bellows from the stairs, “I’ve a _headache_ , and you’re screaming bloody murder!” And then Severus can hear him outside his bedroom _door_ , and panic finally manages to push sluggishly into his mind past the fog of pleasure, but he’s only managed to prop himself up on his elbows and reach for his sheets when the door bangs open. 

And Tobias is standing in the doorway, red with fury, “Some of us have to _work_ in the morning,” he blusters, but then he _looks_ , and his face turns furious. “You - you _freak!”_ he roars, and Severus is suddenly afraid. 

“I can - wait, I just - it’s not what it -” and he tries to sit up, but it hurts and he only half-succeeds because there’s a _hairbrush up his arse_ , and he frantically wishes on every star he can remember from Astronomy that Tobias hasn’t noticed it. But his father stomps over to his bed - the floor actually _shakes_ \- and wrenches his clamped knees apart, and Severus knows then that it’s too late - that he’s seen. 

“Oh, I think it’s _exactly_ what it looks like! That nancy school has turned you into a perverted shirt-lifter! You’ve got a - a - _hairbrush_ up your _bum_ \- I should warm your filthy _hide_ with it!” 

His huge hands are digging bruises into Severus’ knees, and he tries to scramble away. “I-it was just an experiment - I wanted to see if -” 

“Did you like it?” Tobias demands, and Severus can’t answer it - his mouth is suddenly dry as bone, and he can’t stop shaking - because his father is jerking his knees back and forth. “Answer me, boy! _Did you like it?”_

“No!” he bleats, “No - let me go!” 

“Don’t you lie to me, you filthy freak! The whole _street_ heard you screaming - _‘Oh, so good,’_ he mocks in a whisper, _“fuck_ me -” the whole bloody neighborhood will know I’ve sired a damn _poof_ , some - some weak, limp wristed dandy who can’t work for a living, and _I won’t have it_ \- I’d rather my line end with _you_ than bear that shame!” He shakes Severus’ knees wildly once more, then staggers to his feet. His hands move to his belt, and he begins to unfasten the heavy brass buckle there. “Take that damn brush out of your arse and bend over your bed, boy, I’m going to tan your perverted little hide, make you think twice -” 

Tobias has used the belt on him before, but never when he’s been so _angry_ , and Severus calculates the distance between himself and the door before he bolts for it. He’s faster than Tobias, but Tobias is closer to the door, and his heavy hands close around Severus’ upper arms before he reaches the doorframe. 

He kicks and thrashes, but Tobias has the advantage in weight and muscle, and he curses and grunts and throws him back on his bed like a sack of potatoes. His teeth clack together when he lands, and the brush jabs him in the gut, inside, when he lands on the bed. 

He tries to scuttle away - he knows it’s useless, and it only makes Tobias angrier - but he’s _afraid_ , and he tries to kick when Tobias reaches for him. But Tobias catches his ankle tight enough to bruise, and pulls him back across the bed. “Last warning, boy,” he snarls, _“roll over -”_

Severus rolls over. Because Tobias will win, either way, and he’d rather get the belt on his bum than on his prick - he doesn’t _think_ Tobias would hit his genitals, but he’s never seen him so furious, either. 

It burns when the hairbrush is yanked out of his bum; he feels empty and _sore_ , and he flinches when Tobias throws it across the room. “Eileen, bring the twine!” Tobias barks, and then he doubles the belt in his right hand, and takes it to Severus. He’s had the belt before, several times, but it feels like Tobias is holding nothing back. He jolts and bounces against the bed, and his hands fist and tear at the sheets, and he presses his face against the mattress and tries not to scream.

It’s the worst beating he’s ever had; it goes on and on and on, until he feels like the skin of his bum and thighs are beaten raw. Tobias only pauses once, when Eileen brings a ball of sturdy rough hemp twine. The thought of being tied _down_ and beaten is somehow terrifying, and Severus struggles wildly, but Tobias is stronger - Severus is too skinny, too used to relying on his wand and wits, not his strength. 

He uses the twine to tie Severus spread-eagled and face down on his bed, wrists and ankles tied to the metal posts, cursing when Severus manages to land a kick against his ribs before both feet are captured and secured. The bedposts creak and groan when Severus pulls at the twine, but both the rope and the bedposts hold. And then Tobias picks up the belt again.

He beats him until he’s red in the face and gasping for breath, and Severus’ mouth is full of blood where he’s bitten his lip. His thighs and bum are _burning_ , and he thinks it’s not just sweat on his skin but _blood_ , and he sobs in relief when Tobias steps back and drops the belt to the floor. The leather strap is dark and sticky, and he stares at it with painful horror while his father stomps out of the room and down the stairs. It almost feels like he’s been flayed - or how he imagines it might feel to be flayed - and it hurts even to _breathe._ He can’t stop trembling, but it’s finally over.

Only it’s not, because after only a minute the heavy footsteps clomp their way back up the stairs and into his room again. But the belt is left laying on the floor; Tobias leans over him - and Severus jerks and tries to twist away when his father’s fingers poke between his legs. And then his testicles are pinched tightly in rough, calloused fingers. Painfully tight. “Please - no more,” he begs. “I won’t do it again, I _swear_ -”

Tobias is a drunk, but he knows how to _fish_ , and the fishermen’s knots in the twine hold all the tighter after his thrashing. “Shut up, boy,” Tobias orders, and something tight snaps painfully around Severus’ bollocks. 

“What - what are you doing?” his voice is high and squeaky, raw with pain and fear, and he thrashes against the bed when he feels the pressure on his scrotum increase as Tobias’s fingers wrap more _things_ around it. 

“Had a cousin who worked on a sheep farm” Tobias says coldly, “they’d put elastic bands on the sheep’s tails. Would cut off the blood ‘til they’d go numb and black and fall off right off. No son of _mine_ will be a faggot!” 

It takes a minute for the meaning to sink in. _Elastic bands. Numb and black. Fall off_. 

His balls. His father is putting elastic bands around his _balls_. His own father is trying to make his balls fall off, _castrate_ him, and it shatters his defiance. He begs, he weeps, he promises anything - to never _experiment_ again, to never look at another bloke - even though he never had in the first place - to give up magic and live as a muggle - but Tobias adds more and more bands, twisting and looping them, tight and unforgiving, and the tight pressure becomes a constant hot, aching pinch. “You should have never done it to begin with,” he snarls. 

A last band snaps painfully into place; then the hands are gone, and Tobias stands. The painful constriction of his balls remains. “It’s _done_ , boy, you’d best accept it. It’s for your own damn good, you hear? No son of mine, indeed!” He grunts as he bends to pick up his blood-stained belt; leather creaks as he threads it back through his belt loops without even wiping it clean. 

A moment later the bedroom door slams behind him. 

Severus trembles and shudders as his father stomps back downstairs, and through the floor he can hear Eileen ask his father if he’s ready for supper - as if she hadn’t listened to him beating his son - and slowly, it starts to sink in. 

_Neutered. Castrated. Gelded, like a_ \- It seems ugly and unreal. 

The stripes from Tobias’s belt burn hot on his bum and thighs, but he’s far more aware of the sharp pinch between his legs, and he screams and thrashes against his bindings until Tobias comes back in and stuffs a rag into his mouth, and ties another rag around his head to hold it in place. And then Tobias beats him with the belt again until Severus can’t fight the ropes anymore. 

“I _will_ beat it out of you, you sick little freak - if _this_ is what you go to that poncy magic school of yours for, I won’t have it! Look at you - they’ve made you into a mewling little _milksop_ , crying over a belting!” 

By the time he’s left alone again it feels like everything hurts - only Severus can’t feel his balls anymore. And when he realises that, he finds the energy to struggle and writhe and scream against the gag, to even try to hump the mattress - he can feel his _cock_ , but his balls are numb - they’re _numb_ , and he tries to imagine what the rest of his life will be like without his balls. It makes him start screaming again, and then he screams until he’s hoarse, and cries until he’s cried out.

And then he lays there utterly exhausted, and tries to think of nothing at all, because the future is suddenly terrifying, something he doesn’t want to face. It helps; it helps him feel numb inside. _I’m in shock,_ he thinks, and he tries to focus on nothingness, on feeling and thinking absolutely _nothing_ so intently that it drowns out the things he feels - and the things he _can’t_ feel, but should.

But the night seems so _long_ , and when Tobias and Eileen go to bed and turn off his bedroom light and he’s left there, in the dark, he cries again, even though he thought he was already cried out. He can’t sleep; he’s afraid of his dreams. Afraid of what it will mean if he wakes up and his cock isn’t hard like it usually is because he’s had a lovely dream - and even more afraid of what it will mean if his cock _is_. He doesn’t even know if he _can_ still orgasm if he’s castrated - so he lays awake and stares at a crack in the plaster wall next to his bed and tries to not think, of anything at all, because all thoughts seem to lead him back to the words pounding in the back of his burning eyes and aching head: _Castrated. Neutered. Castrated. Neutered._

Tobias leaves him there like that til dawn, and then he doesn’t even face him - he sends Eileen in to do the dirty work. “You shouldn’t have talked back,” she says in a low voice. She has to use a penknife to saw the rope because the knots are pulled so tight. “You kicked him, and made him angry; he doesn’t like that. You _know_ he doesn’t like that.” 

It feels like a kick to the gut that she blames _him_ , and he turns his face away. His eyes burn hotly. She’d ignored him when he needed her; she’d let her husband - his _father_ \- mutilate him. Docking - docking his _genitals_ as if he was a lamb. And _she_ was the damn sheep, following his father around even though he’s a drunkard who slaps her and knocks her around if he can get his hands on her. She fights with him - yells back - but she always does what he tells her, in the end. Just a _fucking_ sheep bleating, and he tries to tell himself that it’s not true, that it’s not his fault, that he doesn’t have to listen to anything she says.

 _Mutilated. Castrated. Turns black and falls off_ \- the words are like fire in his mind, melting away some of the numbness he’s sunken into, and he struggles into an upright position as soon as the last rope is cut away. His body is agonizingly stiff after the beating and being tied in one position for hours, and his back and bum and thighs scream with agony as he makes himself sit up. His hands and feet feel like lumps too, from the tight knots in the twine, but painful pins-and-needles prickle his fingers when he rubs them together. Briefly he harbors a wild hope that maybe, his balls will be all right. That if he rubs them they’ll prickle horribly for a few minutes but they’ll be _fine_ , and he’ll be able to feel them -

He makes a horrible sound, though, when he _sees_ his genitals. The bands have cut into the skin close to his body, and the sac is horribly swollen and blue-purple and - _cold_ to the touch. And it’s like touching someone else’s bits when he touches them with his shaking fingers; there’s not even the dull sense of pressure that his feet can still feel when they’ve fallen asleep. He can’t feel _anything_ in his balls, even when he presses his fingernails sharply into the skin of his scrotum. 

“You’re lucky, boy,” Eileen says flatly, but she stares at her son’s damaged genitals with a sort of horrified fascination. “He could’ve done the thing fully, put bands around your prick too. You’ll still _look_ like a boy after this. Just not where it counts.”

“No, no, no, please no,” he whimpers and tears at the rubber bands - he’ll never be able to stand the sight of one again - but even when they’re off, his balls remain numb. No painful electric prickles; nothing at all. They’re dead lumps in his hands, _dead_ , and he cups them and _begs_ Eileen to fix them, to use a spell or find a potion to give them feeling again, to _help_ him.

Instead she looks away, and tells him that she’ll take him to hospital that afternoon, and he’s to say he’d heard from the older boys at school that it made - _things_ \- more intense. And that he’d thought to try it now he’s home from boarding school, only he’d fallen asleep and forgotten to take the rubber bands off. He’s to tell the doctor it was a stupid, life-shattering _mistake_ instead of a deliberate mutilation. 

He protests because he wants Tobias to _pay_. He wants his father to hurt, to _suffer_ as much as he has. As much as he will for the rest of his life. All the things he’ll never experience - but his mum cuts him off. 

“You’ll go along with it, or you won’t return to Hogwarts. Plenty of places will take young men for scutwork, enough to keep _you_ busy. You _won’t_ cause your father trouble over this. A man’s allowed to discipline his family,” she says sharply, but she won’t meet his eyes.

No Hogwarts. No magic. No _potions_ , and even worse - trapped in Spinner’s End year _round_ , with the man who has mutilated him?

It’s blackmail, but it works. It works because he _needs_ to go back to Hogwarts, because he’d rather die than stay here and give up magic - when it might be all he has left - so he nods jerkily and wipes away the tears on his cheeks and stares defiantly out his window. And he’s glad when she leaves him alone in his room, even if he only curls up in a ball on his creaky bed and tucks his hands between his thighs, fingers curled protectively around the bits he can no longer feel. 

He refuses breakfast; his stomach is too queasy to think of eating. Eileen tells him to take a shower before they go out. “You stink of sex, boy. They’ll say things if you leave the house that way. Tobias won’t like it.” 

Severus doesn’t care if he stinks - but he cares about angering Tobias again. Just the _thought_ of drawing his father’s attention to him now makes him shake, so he drags himself into the shower and turns on the water; the hot water on his raw skin almost makes him scream, but he can’t even dredge up the energy to curse at it. He breathes shallowly and forces himself to stand under the hot spray until the blood is gone and the water runs clear, then he turns the water to cold. It’s easier to pretend his balls are _fine_ when he’s cold and numb all over, and he stands and shivers under the cold shower until he can’t stand it anymore and shuts it off. 

But he forgets that he’s pretending when he towels himself off and his groin feels _odd_ , like he’s missing something. And he looks down without thinking, and it hits him all over again that he’s mutilated. His balls feel even colder now, and they’re still swollen and bluish; he can’t bear to look at himself - at _them_ \- anymore, so he throws on the first pair of pants and jeans he can find. Then he unbuttons his jeans and curls up on his bed with his hands shoved down his pants cupping his balls, because it feels like they’re already gone, and he _needs_ to know they’re there, because the alternative makes him feel a need to retch up his toenails. He can’t accept it, that his own _father_ has hurt him like this.

Severus is ordered to come to the table when Eileen makes lunch. He sits there silent and stiff - his entire backside feels bruised and raw after his beating, and the wooden chairs are hard and uncomfortable. Neither of his parents comment when Severus doesn’t eat. He’s not hungry, and he’s convinced he couldn’t swallow anything, even after Tobias mutters under his breath about wasting food on ungrateful brats. His stomach is in knots, but when Tobias and Eileen are done eating he manages to wash up the few dishes on autopilot while Eileen counts out enough change from the grocery jar for bus fare. 

And then Tobias allows her to use her wand. For the first time Severus can remember in his life, he sees his mum use her wand to cast a spell - and she only uses it to hide the welts and bruises on his bum and thighs, and the rope burns on his ankles and wrists. She could _heal_ them, at least a little, it’s a third year charm - and the illusion spell is sixth-year at least, maybe seventh - but she doesn’t, just like she doesn’t protect him. 

She could’ve stopped Tobias with a _first year_ spell but didn’t; she didn’t even _try_ to intervene. Instead, she brought Tobias the rope to tie him down, and left him there all night. It’s just as much her fault, and he decides that he hates her almost as much as he hates Tobias.

He feels queasy on the hot and crowded bus. He’s never thought about it before but it’s beyond unsettling to _not_ feel the vibrations and bumps of the bus over potholes in his groin. To not feel his _balls_ when he presses his thighs together tightly. 

The waiting room is crowded and stifling too, and he has to fold himself into a chair in a corner between his mum and a very large woman with a screaming baby for almost two hours before his name is called. Then he’s taken to an area that’s _sort_ of private, since it’s just curtained off and he’s sure anyone on the other side of the curtains could hear anything he says. He’s asked a lot of questions by a nurse, and he tells the story his mum has insisted on, in as low and quiet a voice as he can manage - he’s _sure_ she can hear him, but she makes him repeat things, over and over. It’s agonizing to pretend he did it to himself, _castrated_ himself doing something so monumentally _stupid_ , all while sitting still and not showing how much it hurts to sit on the hard plastic chair. 

Then he’s asked to take off his pants and trousers - and the nurse clicks her tongue in sympathy when she sees his swollen scrotum. And then he’s got a woman’s fingers all over his cock and balls, gently pressing and probing and squeezing. Something a teenage boy would jump at the chance for - if he hadn’t just been beaten and castrated. She has rubber medical gloves on, and asks him what he can feel while she pokes and prods - which is _nothing_ , whenever she touches his scrotum. Pulling, he can feel a little; he feels pressure on the skin right at his groin when she tugs gently on his bollocks, but that’s all. 

_That’s not good at all_ , she tells him - like he doesn’t know that already - and then he’s told to get dressed again and go back out to the waiting room until he can see the doctor. 

The large woman and screaming baby are gone, but someone else has taken her seat, and his as well. He ends up sitting next to an old man with a long tangled beard. He hasn’t bathed in days, Severus thinks, because he _smells_ , and it doesn’t help his queasy stomach settle at all. 

And then he’s finally called on and taken to an actual room where a doctor can see him. He’s told to undress - again - and given one of those ridiculous paper gowns that leave him bare from the backside. But at least his backside looks normal, thanks to Eileen’s charm work; it’s only his bollocks that look strange. 

He sits numbly on the examination table and tells the story his mum - _Eileen_ \- came up with. And then he’s questioned, and asked to repeat it in different ways, and he frantically replays his story in his head because if they suspect something’s wrong - and oh, there _is_ \- then he won’t be allowed to go back to Hogwarts. 

He _has_ to go back to Hogwarts, so he repeats his story over and over and tries to act like a horrified, humiliated teenager who’s accidentally castrated himself. The shock is still there, but the adrenaline has worn off and he aches - his hips and wrists and shoulders and ankles, from thrashing against the ropes, in addition to his backside - the only thing that _doesn’t_ hurt is his bollocks, and he doesn’t want to think about that. He stares at a garishly bright pamphlet on the wall about inoculations, and when the doctor asks him if he’s tried other things that might be dangerous, he tries hard to act like he thinks he’s supposed to. 

But it’s hardest when the doctor asks him about his family - if he feels safe, if he’s ever felt threatened - because he _can’t_ tell him the truth. Because they would take him away, probably, and while he never wants to see his parents again - he’s a _wizard_. And the chances of him being placed with a magical family or getting to go back to Hogwarts, if he’s placed with a new family - it would be a mess. There would be paperwork, and trials, and secrecy issues - and too, if he tells them what actually happened - they’d _know_ , and they’d talk, and they’d want _him_ to talk. They’d want details, and feelings. 

And he doesn’t want to feel, doesn’t want to think, and most definitely doesn’t want to talk. He just wants to survive - to get through this and the rest of the summer and Spinner’s End, and go back to Hogwarts. And maybe find a way to never have to return to his parents’ house again. So somehow he manages to lie through his teeth (he’s a _Slytherin_ , lying should be easy by now, but it’s _hard_ ) and tells the Doctor that his parents would never hurt him, that they brought him here as soon as he’d told them - and no, they couldn’t take an ambulance, there wasn’t _money_ for that sort of thing - and he feels safe with them. 

It’s a load of shite and he feels sick and he imagines he can _feel_ the lies on his tongue, bitter and oily and foul, but it seems to work. The doctor tuts over him - _In shock, hmm? You feel like there’s nothing worse in the world than this - but you’re young, you’ll adapt, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you_ \- 

The trite words and empty consolation don’t do anything to help him feel better; it makes him feel worse. There’s no urgency in the Doctor’s questions, like he already knows there’s nothing to do. Instead, there’s an infuriating calm slowness to the man’s movements as he writes things on his clipboard with grand illegible flourishes, and then the man’s fat, sweaty hands brush his thighs and prod his balls. 

He still can’t feel it. He can’t feel it when the doctor pinches the skin of his scrotum, or when his testicles are squeezed, or pulled, or anything having to do with his bollocks. He cringes out of reflex when the Doctor uses a sterile needle to see if the numbness goes all the way through - but it does. The numbness _and_ the needle; it doesn’t hurt. They’re just - dead. Dead even though they’re attached to his living body still. 

“They’ll need to come off,” the doctor says, and suddenly, Severus can’t hear anything else. He thought - he thought he’d known it already, accepted it, but then the doctor talks about necrosis and excision and sutures, and he feels the faint hope he’d had that they could _help_ him somehow shrivel and die, and his mind goes blank.

He can’t feel _anything_. It’s easier to not feel, and he clings desperately to that blissful _nothingness_ as words swirl around him. He’s moved to a hallway, and then a while later to a new room. It’s sterile and white - a surgical suite - and hands help him up to lay on an operating table. It has odd little legs - his feet hook, and buckle, into cold metal stirrups.

Someone asks if he needs to be put under and he thinks that’s a good idea - but then he’s suddenly terrified to be unconscious while his genitals are so vulnerable, and he shakes his head wildly. “No! No - I need to be awake - please -” 

They don’t try to change his mind, but one of the men stands near his head and presses a hand soothingly against one shoulder - Severus thinks he’s there to hold him down, in case he tries to bolt. 

Only it’s too late to run - the damage is already done. 

His hospital gown is flipped up to his waist - he thinks vaguely that more people have seen his genitals today than in his entire _life_ \- and someone wipes down his genitals and groin with alcohol, and then there’s a needle - a sharp pinch where his thigh meets groin. Anaesthetic, even though he can’t feel his bollocks. 

There’s a couple minutes of unbearable waiting; one of the assistants carefully shaves the hair around his bollocks, and the surgeon arranges a tray of tools while he waits for the anaesthetic to work. There’s a scalpel and other gleaming metal implements on his tray, and the pungent smell of antiseptic wipes, and a bright light positioned over his groin. 

Then there’s a bustle of activity when some set amount of time has passed. Gloved fingers move his prick to lay against his stomach - and his cock feels strange and detached, almost like his balls. It makes him feel sick and cold, and even though he knows it’s because of the anaesthetic it makes him tremble. Someone asks if he’s alright, if he can feel anything, and he says _no_ , because he knows it doesn’t make a difference either way. 

There’s no pain at first: just an odd tugging sensation while he makes himself stare at the bright light. But then he feels something low in his belly that makes him gasp - a prick of pain and a smell of something burnt - something pulling painfully, and then there’s a feeling like an elastic band snapping. And _that_ hurts, right up into his abdomen, but he clenches his teeth because he wants it over with _now_. 

He’s tense and knotted up and someone murmurs to him to _try to relax_ and _it’ll be over soon_ , but he can’t. Not with strangers staring at his genitals and poking at him with rubber gloves and sharp knives, completing the mutilation his father started. But he’s still ashamed when he blinks, and a tear spills down his cheek. He’s too old to cry, isn’t he? 

One of the doctors tells him he might feel a pinch, even though he felt more than just a pinch earlier - they hadn’t warned him about _that_. But he feels a strange tugging sensation, and he glances down just in time to see a small lump that used to be attached to _him_ being deposited on the tray. 

And he thinks he might faint because it finally really hits him: they’re _cutting off his balls_. His _bollocks_ are on that tray, and they’re - he can’t. He can’t think about it. He forces himself to stare at the bright light over the surgery table and his legs tremble, and tears run down his face, but he doesn’t make a sound, even when he feels the faint prick of the needle and knows he’s being sewn up again, with fewer parts than he had before. _Castrated_.

And he doesn’t make a sound, either, when the sewing-up is done. They pack so much gauze between his legs that he feels like he’s wearing a nappy, and tell him it’s done and he’ll be ok. He turns his face away from them and doesn’t dignify their reassurance with a reply, because it _won’t_ be ok. Everything’s just been ripped out from under him.

 _Physically_ , it doesn’t hurt much at all. But it hurts _deeper_ , and later when the surgery is over and he’s put in another room to be monitored for the night, he rolls over on his side and pulls the pillow over his face, so no one can hear him scream. 

Even when the anaesthetic wears off and he feels - sore and bruised and _less_ down there, it doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as his parents’ betrayal. _Physically_ , he heals. According to the doctor, the incision heals ‘quite nicely’. And it doesn’t hurt much when the stitches are removed - hot little pricks of pain, and an uncomfortable pulling at his skin - and quickly over. His perineum, the one time he gets the courage to look, looks even _longer_ , from arse to cock and no bollocks in between - just skin pulled smooth. There is an ugly raised pink scar where they’d sewed him up after they’d cut his bollocks off. It makes him nauseous; he’s a _freak_ now. 

He’s started on something called ‘hormone therapy’ as soon as the stitches are removed, which will help him still develop as a boy - he’ll still get facial hair and be able to shave, and get muscles if he wants to, which helps him feel better. Only the tiniest little bit, but it helps alleviate the nightmares he has of waking up looking like a girl someday, even if he knows that’s not really possible. 

The hospital tries to make him talk to someone, a woman with experience in ‘self-trauma’, but he refuses to talk to her. She doesn’t _know_ what it’s like to _have_ bollocks, much less lose them - and besides, it’s not ‘self inflicted’. He can’t tell her that, or why he has to stay with his parents, why magic is all the more important now that he’s - castrated. And he just doesn’t _want_ to talk about it, doesn’t want to think about it. He wants to fill his hours and his thoughts with other things, anything other than sex and mutilation. Thinking about his parents, about sex and mutilation and abuse, hurts so much that he buries the emotions down deep, wraps his heart and mind and thoughts in ice, because he doesn’t want to hurt anymore.

Worst is when Lily’s vacation is over, and she tries to come visit him when he doesn’t come over to her house at all. He doesn’t want to see her; _can’t_ see her, because all his dreams, all his _fantasies_ of her, loving her, marrying her, fucking her - that’s all they’ll ever be, now. But he still _loves_ her, and it hurts to have to see her or speak to her, so he doesn’t answer her owls and when she knocks on the door and calls out to him, he stuffs his head under his pillow and recites potions recipes until she goes away. The first time it happens, he cries himself to sleep; but it gets easier to push her away each time, to ignore her until she leaves. 

He tells himself he _has_ to do it, that he couldn’t bear being close to her knowing she will never be his. So he shoves all his hopes and dreams and emotions and damned _fantasies_ into a box in his mind and coats it in layer after layer of ice. He thought he’d hated the Marauders; but now he knows what it really means to _hate_. He _hates_ his parents, and burns with it, a _cold_ kind of fire. Someday, when he’s of age, he’ll get his own back; but for now, he can’t afford to feel, can’t afford to show weakness. 

He is still numb when he boards the Hogwarts Express for his fourth year. Numb, and cold, and _hard_. He doesn’t wank once that year. 

Or the next year, or the next, or the next. 

He can’t bear to touch himself at all.


End file.
